Cars 3 goes very dark in its first teaser trailer

The first teaser trailer for Disney Pixar's third Cars movie has landed - and it is dark.

The short clip focuses on a high-speed race that Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) is taking part in. The crowd cheers, engines roar, tarmac is scorched. No surprise - the film series, set in a world populated by anthropomorphic automobiles, has mostly focused on the cocky racecar's accelerated lifestyle. So far, so Cars.

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Then, the crash.

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A tire bursts, McQueen spins out of control, and the screen literally fades to black to sickening sounds of twisted metal. A brief, painfully slow-motion shot of a heavily damaged McQueen tumbling through the air, shards of his metalwork - which is his actual body - burning across the ground. Then only the words: "From this moment, everything will change".

Keep in mind for a second, this is Cars. This is the light and carefree Pixar franchise, the one that largely exists to sell toys ($10bn worth for the first film alone) and helps support the studio's more artistic endeavours, such as Ratatouille or Up. Sure, the 2006 original contained a touching message about finding your true home, but the sequel was a farcical spy comedy that made Austin Powers look serious.

Now, for the third instalment, it seems as though Pixar is planning a grim tale of crippling injury and - from the ominous tagline - permanent retirement. That's a tonal shift likely to give cinemagoers whiplash.

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It's also noteworthy that the trailer is in curiously greater detail than the previous entries in the series, which have been bright, colourful, and stereotypically 'cartoony'. This, in comparison, looks like the high-resolution renders of Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport.

Perhaps Disney wants the series to mature, in line with its original audience - anyone who was six when the first film came out is 16 now. Possibly, it wants to tap into the Fast and Furious market. Whatever the reason, this first look at Cars 3 is darker than anything the franchise has done before.

We'll find out how dark in 2017, although an exact UK release date hasn't been confirmed yet.